Fiction

The pressure on your chest weakens as the craft gradually decelerates to a halt, and you find all the mass has been pulled out of you, leaving only your volume.

When I first got switched on, I became the world’s first half-human, half-robot teacher. My mind stretched into every database of human knowledge. I could teach anything.

By the time the streetlights flickered on, the cul-de-sac was already empty. Pumpkins lay sideways on porches, their candles out, their smiles melted. Gwen stood at the end of the street, costume wrinkled, pillowcase empty.

It followed him like a curse. Every step he took, the tick tick ticking of his heart echoed in the chamber of his ears, trailing him in the hallways, threatening to expose all that he was.

The clock is broken, it stopped ticking ten years ago, stopped counting how much time had passed. It is an old grandfather clock, wood of oak, and sculpted to perfection.

“I could sleep ‘til eleven tomorrow,” I said, throwing myself across her bed, sprawling on her star-patterned comforter. Mary took a seat at her vanity, and I could see her eyes roll on her blue-painted face.

I awake on the floor in the dark. All around me is emptiness, inexplicable emptiness. The thick blackness pushes against my eyeballs, digging its thumbs into my skull. Disoriented, I scrabble against the floor, a thin and matted carpet.

You had always been neat. As a child, you would organize your toys in order of height, and your clothes in the rainbow. Your parents had wondered about OCD, but you always said you were just tidy. 

“On a dark and stormy night” 

“Oh don’t start like that…Those stories are always stupid,” I say as I adjust my seating position. “Can’t I just go trick or treating now?” 

The West Wind is a banker in a smart navy suit and a tie. His dress shoes clack on the pavement; he’s got someplace to be, always someplace to be, rushing to the sidewalk, the subway, the elevator, checking his gold Rolex watch.

It was with a quiet sense of misery, a longing deep in her soul, that she watched the people around her.